Feb. 25, 2014
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The Wallace Centers' production garden. / Special to the Register

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Meredith Salguaro left a retail career in New York City to participate in a 2012 apprenticeship at the Wallace Centers of Iowa. / Special to the Register

Apprenticeship sessions

Sessions will be at least a minimum of eight weeks with a maximum of 15 weeks. Each session will provide comprehensive, practical experience operating a medium-sized organic vegetable and fruit production garden, including direct seeding, planning weekly CSA produce boxes, produce harvesting and cleaning, orchard care and high-tunnel production. Apprentices will also assist with public programs and events such as field days, youth programming, farmers markets and supplying the farm’s restaurant. In addition, the apprentices will be expected to create pay-it-forward projects following the apprenticeship that help others better understand the importance of sustainable farming practices. WCI will provide a stipend of $1,000 to $1,500, depending upon the length of the apprenticeship, plus housing and assistance after the apprenticeship in developing a business plan and work portfolio. For a complete list of program opportunities and expectations, visit www.wallace.org or contact Diane Weiland at 641-337-5019 or dianeweiland@wallace.org. Prospective apprentices must complete a brief questionnaire before April 15, 2014.

Lucena Morse, who took part in the Wallace Centers' apprenticeship program in 2013, harvests greens from the farm's hoop house. / Special to the Register

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Even in high school, Zach Frank, now 23, had a hunch that college just wasn’t the thing for him, but he enrolled at Grand View University, anyway. He had a scholarship there and that’s what you do after high school, right?

“I really liked school and I love learning,” Frank said, “so I decided to give it a try.” But he never found his groove at Grand View. In the meantime he worked for the Des Moines Public Library and bided his time. He considered going back to do something in the medical field, but that didn’t feel right, either.

One day, Frank said, “I grabbed Joel Salatin’s ‘The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer,’ and when I read it, I thought, ‘I could do this!’ It really spoke to me. I’ve always had an interest in organic farming and growing things.”

Frank sent that thought seedling out into the universe, and it ended up taking root in the fertile field of the Wallace Centers of Iowa Small Farm Field and Business Apprenticeships, newly plowed.

Not 'cheap labor'

WCI is a nonprofit that operates not only a working farm and farm-to-table restaurant in rural Orient (the Henry A. Wallace Country Life Center), but also the historic Wallace House in Sherman Hill, which is open for tours and events and also serves meals created with the farm’s produce.

Diane Wieland, WCI’s CEO, said they’ve hired interns before, “but mostly, they were just looking for a summer job. We (decided that we) wanted people who wanted to learn about small-field farming, and at some point in the future will do something with that knowledge.” The apprenticeship route, Wieland said, is as much about learning as it is about actually doing the work.

“We’re interested in more than just cheap labor, and we knew there were people out there who want to know about small-scale farming. Where could they go to learn that?” The apprenticeship program is designed to fill that gap and to provide practical experience in sustainable farming practices and to encourage future work in that kind of food production.

Henry A. Wallace said, with real prescience as it turns out, that “people in cities may forget the soil for as long as 100 years, but Mother Nature's memory is long and she will not let them forget indefinitely.” In large part, the WCI’s mission of building awareness of local food, sustainable agriculture and civility centers around ensuring that the last half of that quotation is true. And the apprenticeship is, literally, a hands-on approach to making it so.

The first year they offered an apprenticeship in 2012, WCI teamed up with the Women, Food and Ag Network to find its apprentices. In 2013, WCI started a solo program and got it off the ground with a grant from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture.

For the 2014 season, four apprenticeships will be funded through the Empowering Adair County Foundation. Three of them will be at the Country Life Center and one will work at the Danamere Farm near Carlisle, where Wallace’s farm co-manager Mosa Shayan lives with his wife.

'A better steward'

Lucena Morse, 63, is at a different point in her life than Frank, but was drawn to the WCI apprenticeship last year by the same innate connection to growing things. Morse grew up on a farm near Williamsburg that has been in her family since 1850 and has lived and worked on both coasts. “I had been away for many years, and found that I was longing to be back in Iowa. I became really concerned about the way agriculture is going.” She wanted to learn how to be a better steward of her family’s land (which she and her siblings still own but don’t live on) and to understand sustainable food production.

Before she even got to the Wallace farm, she had earned a certificate in diversified and entrepreneurial agriculture at Marshalltown Community College in 2012. She began looking for internship and apprenticeship opportunities and served her first one, from February to June of last year, as a biology intern at the Neal Smith prairie, which spoke to her fascination with native plants.

She began at the Wallace farm July 1. “The learning was almost completely hands-on, but there were always opportunities to ask questions and I was also asked my opinion about things,” Morse said.

Wieland said this informational back-and-forth was valuable for everyone concerned and was one of the “unanticipated results” of the apprenticeship program. For example, “(Lucena) knew more about prairie plants than any of us — and we have 9 acres of prairie. She noticed the wild parsnips (which are not human-visitor friendly) growing and taught us how to deal with them.”

Nebraska business

Since finishing her apprenticeship at WCI, Morse has moved to a small farm in Papillion, Neb., where she and her partner, Tom Lundahl, are putting their small-scale farm knowledge to work for their nascent business, Meristem Farm and Nursery. The farm will be producing not only organic produce to take to the Omaha farmers market, but raising chickens, growing flowers, and propagating native prairie plants and aronia berry cuttings to sell to growers.

Morse’s project is exactly the sort of undertaking that makes Wieland’s heart go pitter-pat, and is the very raison d’etre not only of the apprenticeship, but of WCI itself. And both Morse and young Frank wax enthusiastic about the quality of program and the serious amount of learning they managed in a fairly short time. “It’s a more connected way of doing things,” Frank said about WCI’s model.

Since his time at the farm, Frank, who for now works at Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore, has been lighted up with idea sparks. He sees food production as a ministry inseparable from his faith, and hopes to not only get a church-tended garden going this spring but also to work eventually with a nonprofit or create one around food he grows. Or maybe an orchard. Oh, and also vermiculture (worms making compost).

That’s a lot of plans for a 20-something with only an apprenticeship under his belt, and Frank has a ways further to go to put his knowledge to practical use. Luckily, the Wallace opportunity taught him about that, too.

“They taught me that I don’t have to do everything right now, and that maybe I don’t have all the skills I need yet, but I can learn them,” he said. “You can read all you want about (growing things), but in the end, you need to stick something in the ground. If it dies, well, you’ve learned something.”